


Of All The Flowers You Picked

by Arvari



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: ... sort of, Angst, Character Death, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Needs a Hug, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26694778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arvari/pseuds/Arvari
Summary: Inspired (unsurprisingly) by The Amazing Devil’s beautifulElsa’s Song.Geralt doesn't believe the news about his bard's death at first. Rumors like that are pretty common.The thing is, they're not just rumors this time...
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 3
Kudos: 163





	Of All The Flowers You Picked

Geralt didn’t believe the news about Jaskier’s death at first. He never did. Those rumors came and went all the time, spread mostly by wannabe-bards wanting to earn more money by claiming that their mediocre attempt at a ballad is the last work of the one and only Jaskier, or by Valdo Marx, who probably thought that if enough people believe in a thing, it will come into being.

Oh, no, Geralt didn’t believe his Jaskier was dead.

He was very much alive, as always, probably charming his way into a pretty boy’s pants right now.

And Geralt would meet him in Oxenfurt in a month, just as they’d agreed before parting ways, and they would have a good laugh.

But this rumor didn’t go away. It was actually becoming more and more widespread the closer he got to Oxenfurt.

He couldn’t get away from it. In every tavern he went to, at every market, he heard the same. The White Wolf’s bard had died.

With every step taken towards Oxenfurt, Geralt’s hope grew dimmer and dimmer, flickering feebly in his chest.

The accounts of what had actually _happened_ to the bard differed, of course, from being stabbed by an angry husband of one of his conquests to drowning in a river while trying to save a student. And while Geralt could see the former being true, he couldn’t, for one second, believe the latter.

When the dying flame of hope in his chest finally went out, he was two days away from Oxenfurt, sitting in a tavern he had stopped at for night. He would have preferred to ride on, but he had pushed Roach enough during the past few days, and she needed her rest.

That was when he heard the whispered conversation between a young patron and a traveling minstrel.

“I’m telling you,” the patron was saying. “I study there, I know. He was just lying there in his bed like a ragdoll, staring. Someone must’ve poisoned him, I don’t know. Or it was magic. He was what, sixty? And he didn’t look a day over twenty. Maybe he just couldn’t afford whatever was keeping him young all that time.”

“Might have been a revenge,” the minstrel suggested. “He must’ve pissed lots of people off when he was alive.”

“I dunno,” the patron said. “If it was, I probably means he shouldn’t have got separated from that stupid Witcher of his.”

Geralt took a long, shaking breath.

He drank himself into oblivion that night. And the night after. And the next.

When he finally reached Oxenfurt, tired and reeking of cheap vodka, it didn’t take much to find someone who would point him to the place where they buried the bard – a little hill in a wood just west of the town walls.

Geralt knew from Jaskier’s stories that the bard always loved going there, either to think, compose, get drunk or, on several occasions, have a romantic midnight rendez-vous.

It was on his way there when he realized that he probably should have brought flowers. It was what people did, wasn’t it? Geralt didn’t really know. He mostly dealt with dead monsters, and those didn’t really care about common courtesy.

But then of course, Jaskier would rather see him bring the cheap vodka than some flowers.

And it didn’t matter, anyway. Because Jaskier was dead, and no matter what Geralt would do, he would stay that way.

But then he passed a window, and on its windowsill sat a flowerpot full of sage, and what harm would it do to just take a few of those little purple flowers and bring them to his bard? So Geralt did.

And then, a few minutes later, he also took several white lilies from a flowerbed near another house.

And then he plucked several red roses from a bush by the city gate.

And then, as he was crossing a stream in the wood, he saw little blue blooms in the grass, almost the same color as Jaskier’s eyes.

Geralt looked down at his mismatched bouquet and sighed. He heard an echo of a drunken conversation he and the bard had several years ago.

“One day, I’ll be dead,” Jaskier had said. “And _you_ , my dear Wolf, will forget me. Boom. In a heartbeat.”

“No. No, Jaskier. No,” Geralt had insisted. “I will _never_ forget you.”

“Prove it.”

“Prove it? How?”

“When I’m dead and you come to lay flowers on my grave – shut up, you _will_ – I want you to bring me forget-me-nots.”

“But you won’t know if I did it or not. You’ll be…” he had gulped, unable to say the words.

“Dead,” Jaskier had finished for him. “I’ll be dead, Geralt. But I will know. Trust me. I will.”

“Fine. I’ll do it. Whatever.”

“Promise me, Geralt.”

“I promise.”

And now, Geralt bit his lip, staring at those tiny flowers mocking him with their color, and then he ran, ran away from the stream and the horrible blue blooms and his foolish promise.

He ran until he reached the hill, and on it, a simple grave with a little headstone, so unbecoming of the frivolous bard that Geralt wanted to scream.

He fell on his knees in front of the headstone, breathing heavily, and placed the tiny bouquet on the ground, hand shaking.

So this was it. This was where his bard would forever _rot_.

Geralt closed his eyes, feeling the tell-tale prickle of tears.

His urge to scream grew stronger, memories of Jaskier rushing through his mind no matter how hard he tried to stop them. Everything they’d been through, great adventures and small ones, and everyday moments, too. He could almost hear Jaskier’s melodic voice, see his bright smile, and his eyes, blue, so blue…

“I love you,” he said, words he’d never dared to say, to even _think_ too loud. He threw his head back and looked up to the sky. “You hear me?” he shouted. “I fucking love you you _dead bastard_!”

He didn’t know what he expected. A rainbow? A little bird singing the melody of _Toss a Coin To Your Witcher_? Some fucking _sign_ that the bard heard?

He knew what he didn’t expect.

He didn’t expect to actually hear Jaskier’s voice by his side.

“Of all the flowers you picked…”

Geralt gasped for breath as a man stepped into his line of vision – and it _was_ Jaskier, looking just as he did he last time Geralt saw him, but also different somehow. His eyes seemed brighter, his skin was almost glowing, and his smile…

Geralt’s medallion hummed.

“I _knew_ you would forget,” the bard said, his inhuman face grinning, “forget-me-nots.”


End file.
